Tim Worstall and Chris Dillow ponder nepotism in the media. After all these years, I'm still bemused by just how cosy our world can be. Back in the Eighties, when I freelanced for the Guardian and the Statesman, I went to a boho NW1 dinner party where every young left-wing scribe, pundit and wannabe-pundit around the table was the off-spring of well-known industry types. They were all extremely good at pontificating about the lower depths, yet their combined knowledge of the world was confined to about two pages of the central London A-Z. Naturally, there was, of course, no way of mentioning this without appearing - horror of horrors - chippy and working class.
More incestuous relationships exposed in the Guardian's fashion item on the fluffy, well-dressed sons and daughters of celebs:
Let's see: there is Lizzy Jagger co-fronting the current Marks & Spencer campaign, and a Burberry campaign predicated pretty much entirely on the idea that children of the famous are very glamorous and maybe, just maybe, if you, too, buy a macintosh, you can be as stylish as Otis and Isaac (as in Bryan) Ferry, Fenton (as in David) Bailey or Max (as in Jeremy) Irons. Meanwhile, Nicole Richie, Lily Allen and Peaches Geldof have all been cited by high-street manufacturers as this season's fashion icons. And the fashion shows last month were clogged up with the children of so-and-so in the front row, from Zoe (as in Lenny) Kravitz to the seemingly bottomless barrel of Rolling Stones offspring.
And so on, and so on. Given the way our education system works - or rather, doesn't work - I don't imagine things will improve any time soon.